


Chlamydia is Not a Flower

by BazineApologist



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Crack, F/M, Humor, Meet Cute in the Student Health Center, Mention of Ben/Bazine, Mention of Damerey, Mention of Gingerpilot, Mention of Hux/Bazine, std testing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 11:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BazineApologist/pseuds/BazineApologist
Summary: Rey and Ben have a meet cute in the unlikeliest of places— the waiting room of the Student Health Center while they both await the results of their STD/STI tests.





	Chlamydia is Not a Flower

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to dankobak and [theselittlethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theselittlethings/pseuds/theselittlethings) for giving me this idea in a Twitter thread.
> 
> To the rest of the fandom: Happy Valentine’s Day and I’m sorry! 😅
> 
> Unbeta’d because sometimes I’m just too embarrassed to ask for a second opinion.

“Chlamydia is NOT a flower! Don’t give it to your partner this Valentine’s Day!” mocked the poster hanging across from Rey. 

She huffed angrily and averted her eyes, but no matter where Rey looked, she was met with reminders of what she was doing sitting alone in the waiting room of the Student Health Center at 8:17 a.m. 

The whole room was festively decked for Valentine’s Day, and hearts, flowers, and STD prevention seemed to be the running theme. 

“How could I have been so stupid?” Rey bemoaned aloud, earning a raised eyebrow from the sleepy student worker manning the reception desk. 

Rey didn’t care. The girl already knew what she was doing there. She had checked Rey in and collected her paperwork, clearly reading what Rey had marked under “Reason for Your Visit?”

That had been fifteen minutes ago, and despite being the only person here, she was still waiting for the nurse to call her back and give her the results of the test she had taken almost a week prior.

Of course they had called her with her results on Friday afternoon! And of course she hadn’t seen the message until well after they had already closed for the weekend!

After obsessing about the test results nearly every minute of every day since she had peed into that cup and handed it over, Rey hadn’t wanted to risk playing phone tag. Instead, she had trekked across campus hours before her first class, just to make sure she was there the moment the Student Health Center opened. She wanted to hear it directly from the doctor’s mouth.

While Rey sat musing on the ridiculous policy that had prevented the clinic from either emailing or leaving test results on her voicemail, someone else entered the Health Center and began checking in. 

Rey looked up as the person entered the waiting area, and saw a man folding himself into a nearby chair. He was very big and looked very uncomfortable, his feet awkwardly positioned beneath him, one foot turned on its side. 

Rey studied him surreptitiously, while he busied himself with filling out the intake form. 

She took in his prominent nose and plentiful beauty marks, the perfectly tousled look of his long, dark hair. But what really caught her attention were his lips. They were, quite possibly, the plushest and pinkest Rey had ever seen! She wondered what they would feel like…

No! Nope! This was neither the time nor place for Rey to entertain such thirsty thinking! And depending on her test results, it wouldn’t be the time or place for seven to ten days after completing her antibiotic regimen.

Just at that moment, the nervous stranger glanced up and caught Rey staring.

She froze, doing a very convincing impression of a deer caught in the headlights. There was just something about this man’s face that made her unable to turn away immediately.

“Um, hey,” Rey offered, deciding that two people could only maintain sustained eye contact for so long before it became impossible to go back to ignoring one another. 

“Hey.” The stranger blushed.

“I’m Rey,” she offered.

“Ben,” he replied with an odd little wave. 

“You know,” she began again, recognition dawning on her, “you look kind of familiar. Did we have a class together?”

“Uh, maybe,” he said, shifting toward her. 

“Freshman Composition? Last semester? With Nunez?”

“Uh, no. Senior,” he told her.

“Oh, I guess not then. Wait…” she said, her eyes narrowing and her voice turning icy. “We have met. You’re a friend of Poe Dameron.”

“You know Poe?” he asked, his face drooping slightly. “Yeah, we went to high school together.”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, getting animated. “But we haven’t really had a chance to talk since he sent me a certain text. If you happen to see him, can you give him a message for me?”

Ben let out a resigned sigh, like this wasn’t the first time he had been forced to play messenger for Poe. “Yeah, sure.”

“Tell him Rey said to get fucked! Er, actually. Nevermind. I don’t want to be responsible for a campus health crisis. Tell him to spare us all and go fuck himself!”

Ben started at her in bald shock, as Rey’s mind caught up to her tongue and she realized what she had just said to him. Just as she was about to apologize for her incredibly inappropriate outburst, Ben spluttered out, “You, too?”

“Poe gave you chlamydia, too?” Rey cried.

“No! NO! Poe and I aren’t… I’m not… Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it…” He was floundering. “It’s just, I wanted _you_ to know… I like girls—WOMEN! I… I… Poe’s not the one who gave it to me,” he finally finished with a whimper.

Rey couldn’t keep the laugh from escaping. “Oh God! You too! Maybe it already _is_ a campus health crisis!”

“Maybe,” he said miserably.

Rey sat quietly while Ben just continued looking miserable and embarrassed. She wanted to reassure him that he was not alone, but when she opened her mouth to say it, something else came out. “So, if Poe didn’t give it to you… who did?”

“You’re not serious.”

“I am! Ben! I think we have a responsibility as members of this campus community to try and figure out how widespread of a problem this is! And we can’t do that without some candid discussion of sexual history!”

“We _just_ met, and now you want to know my sexual history?”

“Not true! We met months ago, in the Student Union. I was having lunch with my roommate Finn and his girlfriend Rose. You and Poe came over because Poe is good friends with Finn.”

“You remember that?”

“Of course!”

“But you didn’t remember that my name was Ben?”

“I’m bad with names,” Rey said defensively. “But now that I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure you introduced yourself as Kylo R—”

“Okay, fine!” he interrupted her. “I’m actually not even sure I have chlamydia, yet, anyway. That’s why I’m here. To get my results.”

“Actually, same. But stop deflecting! Who was it who maybe… potentially… _might_ have given you chlamydia?”

Ben looked for a minute like he wasn’t going to answer, but when Rey pushed out her bottom lip and started pouting, he relented. With an eye roll he offered, “Bazine Netal.”

“Wait! Shut up! Shut the front door! You had sex with Bazine Netal?” Rey asked, her voice full of awe. “I’m seriously impressed, Ben! Seriously! She almost kissed me at a party once, because some frat douche dared her to, and I think it’s the highlight of my collegiate experience. As a bisexual woman, I would normally say that performative lesbianism or bisexuality to serve the male gaze is really gross and offensive,” Rey told him, tapping into knowledge gleaned in the Women’s Studies elective she was taking that semester. “But, also as a bixesual woman, I really wanted to make out with Bazine Netal!”

Ben gulped and his eyes lost focus for a second in response to Rey’s declaration. “Uh, you’re bisexual?” he asked.

Rey gave him a sharp look. “Dude! What did I just say about the male gaze?”

“Sorry!” he said, chastened. “Anyway, we didn’t exactly have sex. It was more like, just enough contact for her to give me an STD… potentially.” 

“Hmm…” Rey said, thinking. 

“It wasn’t that!” he insisted, turning bright red. “It’s just we were both kind of drunk, and you’re not supposed to… when I realized, I stopped because… I have plenty of sexual stamina!!”

“Ben, chill. What are you even… Oh my god!” Rey said through a chuckle. “I _promise_ I was not thinking about you prematurely ejaculating.”

Ben buried his face in his giant hands while Rey tried to control her laughter.

When she was sufficiently composed and sober, she continued. “And I’m very proud of you for stopping when you realized you were both too drunk to consent.” Rey’s voice took on a wistful quality for the next bit. “I only wish Poe or I had been similarly responsible during our drunken hookup. Or, at the very least, smart enough to use a condom.” Rey shuddered, remembering all of the bad decisions that had led her to this moment. “Anyway,” she said, shaking herself out of her self-flagellating reverie, “I was just thinking about what, _or who_ , Poe and Bazine have in common.”

“Oh,” he said, still too embarrassed to look her directly in the eye.

They fell silent again as they both pondered Rey’s question.

After a minute or two, Ben whipped his head in Rey’s direction. “I know who it is!” he said, suddenly seething. “Patient Zero. I know who he is!”

“Who?” Rey demanded. “Who??”

“My fucking roommate: Armitage Hux!”

Rey gasped, even though she had no idea who Ben was talking about. She hadn’t been lying when she told him she was bad with names, but she would definitely have remembered meeting someone with a name that stupid. “How can you be sure?” she asked.

“I guess I can’t. But I know Hux and Poe hook up pretty regularly, because I pretty regularly find Poe naked in my kitchen drinking directly out of the orange juice carton.”

“Oh my god, Ben! Like I didn’t already have enough reasons to regret hooking up with him, you had to go and tell me he drinks directly out of the carton!” 

“Er, sorry. Just so you know, though, I would _never_ drink out of the carton.”

Rey blushed slightly, before changing the subject back to the issue at hand. “And Bazine?”

“Well, to be honest, that’s all a bit fuzzy, but I seem to remember her slurring something about how I, um, compared to the ‘firecrotch in the next room.’”

Again, Rey couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity. “Your roommate’s ginger? She did not call him a firecrotch!” 

Ben shrugged. 

“Was it at least a flattering comparison?” asked Rey. 

“Uh… yeah. Quite flattering, actually.”

Rey felt a pleasant fluttering somewhere deep in her belly, which she ignored. “Well, we have to do something! Get some revenge against this Hux person! Lick his food. Pee in his shampoo. Something!”

Ben looked at her with some combination of fear and admiration. “Pee in his shampoo? Is that really something people do?”

“Only in response to the most serious of roommate betrayals,” Rey explained. “And I would say indirectly giving chlamydia to you and your good friend Rey definitely qualifies as a serious offense.”

“But we don’t actually know if we have chlamydia, yet,” he pointed out. “Oh and what was that about my ‘good friend Rey’?”

Rey smiled up at him and saw his eyes were downcast and he was fidgeting. “Didn’t you know? Awaiting STD test results together is, like, the refiner’s fire for friendship. We’re fast tracked, you and I.” 

“Oh. _Just_ friendship?”

Rey blushed in earnest at his unexpected forwardness. “Um… not necessarily, I guess. It’s just… kind of a weird time and place to be picking someone up, you know? Especially before either of us know our test results.”

“That’s not what's happening here,” he told her, quickly. “I’m not picking you up. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can only technically pick someone up if you’ve just met them. You and I, we didn’t just meet. We’re already good friends. This is more… a couple of good friends acknowledging the instant bond between them and deciding to explore the romantic possibility.”

“Ah, of course! But… should we maybe wait to see what the nurse says before we explore this any further? I don’t want to start anything that I won’t be able to finish.”

“Oh. Yeah, maybe,” he replied, before lapsing into silence. “Except,” he started again, “it’s only seven days.”

“What’s only seven days?”

“The treatment. I’ve been googling. If either of us tests positive, it’s a single dose antibiotic and then they tell you to abstain for seven days. And besides, I wasn’t planning to put out on the first couple dates. I deserve to be wooed, Rey.”

“You want to date me? Woo me?” Rey asked, her surprise apparent.

“Well… yeah? Although, I think I actually said _you_ should woo _me_.”

“No one has ever offered to woo me before. I’m pretty sure Poe just looked at me by the keg, and said ‘DTF?’ He didn’t even say the words. He literally spoke the acronym.”

“Well, I’m not Poe. We couldn’t be more different. If you’re looking for someone like Poe—”

“I’m not! I’m definitely not!”

“Rey!” called out a woman dressed in scrubs, standing at the entrance of a corridor.

“That’s me!” Rey called, biting her lip and gathering up her stuff to follow the woman back. “Look,” she told Ben, quickly, “I’ll wait for you outside, or you wait for me. I really want to hear more about this wooing stuff. Whatever happens.”

Ben nodded.

As she followed the woman back into the bowels of the Health Center, she heard another voice call Ben’s name.

—

When Rey emerged from the Health Center, 20 minutes later, she was thankfully, blessedly, chlamydia-free! (As well as gonorrhea-free and HIV-negative!)

Rey was already aware of how risky her behavior had been, but the doctor still spent most of their appointment reiterating it, and giving her two pocketsful of free condoms.

The scare tactic had only been slightly lessened by the woman admitting that chlamydia was fairly common and non-serious, if treated promptly.

But Rey still felt like she had made a narrow escape, as she pushed open the front double-doors of the Student Health Center.

Ben was already waiting for her.

And he didn’t look quite as relieved or triumphant as Rey.

“Well?” Rey asked, pretty sure she already knew the answer.

“Seven days,” he told her. “I’ll take you on seven dates, if you’ll let me, and drop you off on your doorstep seven times. Maybe by date three or four we’ll have progressed to goodnight kisses.”

“The Doctor _was_ very clear that it couldn’t be transmitted through kissing,” Rey told him.

“You too, then?”

“Well… no. I’m clean. I, uh, specifically asked her about the kissing. And some other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” he asked hopefully.

“We’ll only be kissing,” she told him definitively. “But I think all my questions did prompt her to give me a few more free condoms. So not a total waste,” she said, unzipping the front pocket of her backpack and showing him her ample supply.

“Seven day,” he groaned as he took in the sheer number of brightly colored foil squares.

“Seven days,” she agreed.

“Can I at least take you to breakfast?”

Rey smiled. “Okay. I should warn you, though, the doctor specifically told me that chlamydia couldn’t be transmitted through sharing food and drink, so I’ll probably take advantage of that.”

“I’ll probably just order extra bacon,” he shrugged.

“You’re perfect!” she told him, grabbing his hand and pulling him in the direction of her favorite just-off-campus diner.

 

—


End file.
